The French TV station France24 has a report on their citizen media "Observers" website showing a screenshot of Yahoo! China's front page which at some point today displayed the "most wanted" ad, linking to the full photo gallery and list. The report says:

Yahoo China pasted a "most wanted" poster across its homepage today in aid of the police's witch-hunt for 24 Tibetans accused of taking part in the recent riots. MSN China made the same move, although it didn't go as far as publishing the list on its homepage.

Here is their report and Yahoo! China screenshot:

Here is the MSN China screenshot:

The report does not say what time the screenshots were taken. As of this writing, neither Yahoo! China nor MSN China are running the "most wanted" information anywhere that I have been able to find. (If anybody does find it in some corner of those sites where I've failed to look please let me know.) Did anybody else see this material on Yahoo! China and MSN China, or have a sense of how long it was there?

I wouldn't be surprised if the local editors just automatically ran it because everybody else in China was running it, then got over-ridden by management in the U.S. who realized how badly this would play outside of China... Such is the disconnect between China and the West on the Tibet issue.

Interesting note: France24 Observers is run by the former head of Reporters Without Borders' Internet desk, Julien Pain. Here is a video of him describing the project.

This clip does not surprise me at all. Being a veteran of Western media's blacklist, as a fan of Dr. mahatir, I have seen such Western media distortion for a long time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQnK5FcKas

Roll back the clock 18 years, and what we see today in Tibet's reporting is the same type that happened to Dr. Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew.

The Western media would most of the time give an apparent picture of fair reporting. But when a crisis hits that could potentially displace a leader, they suddently take sides and report only 1 side of the story.

This youtube clip is also a testament why China should not censor the internet. The only way we can arm ourselves against Western hegemony is by exposing their propaganda machine and to do it requires everyone to come to aid. If the internet is censored, we would be like soldiers without arms.

p/s I subsribed to Newsweek and Time and the Economists magazine from 1989 to 1994. Since 1994, I have cancelled my subscriptions to all Western news magazines and have never read any one of them from page 1 to the end. By 1998, at the height of the Asian financial crisis and the Malaysia "Reformasi" movement, I have totally weened off them.

The ethical problem with showing these "most wanted" pictures is that the "most wanted" may very well just be scapegoats, and guilty of no more than vandalism, if that. If they are arrested, they may face torture or even death. The violent crimes of a few do not justify condemning all protesters/rioters involved.

The "most wanted" pictures are clearly meant to intimidate any would-be protesters, letting them know that simply being caught on video could lead to arrest and its possibly horrific consequences.

Regarding intermarriage between Han and Tibetans: some have suggested that encouraging intermarriage is the policy of the Chinese government, as a way to speed assimilation. More and more Han are moving to Lhasa. In such a situation, intermarriage may be an important component in weakening ethnic solidarity among Tibetans and making them into minorities in their own homeland.